November 17, 2006

TALLAHASSEE, Florida: A Department of Juvenile Justice employee said Friday he was fired because he would not go along with a cover-up about the seriousness of a fight between guards at a boot camp and a boy who later died.

Stephen Meredith said he was one of the first agency officials to see a videotape of the January confrontation between guards and 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson, who died the next day. He said he knew immediately that policies were violated and that the agency had a serious problem — but that others in the agency did not agree.

Meredith was fired in August from his job in the inspector general's office.

"I believe the reason that I was terminated is because I wouldn't go along with misrepresentations related to Mr. Anderson's death," Meredith said.

Anderson's death and his videotaped encounter with guards sparked protests and led to the elimination of the military-style juvenile rehabilitation camps.

Meredith, 40, said he and two other DJJ officials who saw the tape participated in a conference call with DJJ Secretary Anthony Schembri and other senior staff the same day, shortly after Anderson died.

Meredith said he told the others that Anderson was not resisting and that a guard forced an ammonia capsule up Anderson's nose, which Meredith thought was a policy violation.

"I'd never seen anything like this, and this is the type of thing that if a parent had done this to a child, they'd be brought on child abuse charges," Meredith said. He said another staffer agreed, but the third person who'd seen the video downplayed the guards' actions.

Meredith said the staffer who agreed with his assessment also had been forced to leave the department, but he declined to name that person.

Department of Juvenile Justice officials didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meredith said he was never told why he was fired.

Meredith, who is black, had initially filed a complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations about his firing because he believed it may have been race-related, his attorney, Marie Mattox, said.

Mattox said she filed a new complaint alleging retaliation and said Meredith will await the findings of the commission's investigation before filing a lawsuit alleging he was wrongly fired.

Anderson's parents sued in July, seeking more than $40 million (€31.3 million) from the juvenile justice agency, which oversaw the boot camp program, and the Bay County Sheriff's Office, which ran the camp.

No criminal charges have been filed.